AI rewards are for those making 'meaningful outcomes': Autodesk CEO
Autodesk (ADSK) surged on Thursday after the company reported an 11% jump in revenue in its latest quarterly report. Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the drivers of the software company's upbeat results.
Anagnost says the company's diversity of use cases drives success, stating "we make software for people who make everything." He notes firms face "long-term capability challenges" lacking resources, allowing Autodesk to help them achieve sustainability goals and overcome "capacity challenges."
Anagnost highlights Autodesk's "robust" business model where customers invest "from design to construction," saying the "life cycle solutions" are driving margins.
On AI, he acknowledges the perpetual hype cycle on new technology darling, but stresses the "real rewards" go to those generating "meaningful outcomes."
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: Autodesk shares climbing higher today after reporting an 11% jump in revenue from a year ago, also issuing strong guidance. The company doubling down on its generative AI efforts through new technologies. Let's talk about that-- how big of a catalyst it could be for the company.
We want to bring in Andrew Anagnost. He is the CEO of Autodesk. Andrew, it's good to see you today. Congratulations on another strong quarter here from the company. So your sales were up 11% in the latest quarter. You're across multiple industries. Talk to us just about what the underlying demand looks like for your products and services.
ANDREW ANAGNOST: Yeah. Well, thank you, Seana. And thank you for having me on-- on the show. Look, there's a couple of things that really underpin what's going on here. One, we're a very diverse business. We make things-- we make software for people that make everything-- bridges, roads, buildings, products, you name it-- somebody makes it with our software.
But underpinning the environment for our customers, regardless of any short-term issues, is they have real sustain long-term capacity challenges. There's not enough money, there's not enough people, there's not enough resources to make, remake, manufacture, produce everything that needs to be made. And that's what's driving the ongoing and continual technology investment through-- with us and with other players that are helping them get ahead of this capacity challenge.
BRAD SMITH: Certainly, and so this is a multi-year process that you've talked about, developing certain life cycle solutions here. When you think about that multi-year process, I mean, how long are we talking? What should investors be tracking up against in order to see that filter through to some of the margins for the business?
ANDREW ANAGNOST: Yeah, look, I think what you're seeing right now is the impact of those life-cycle solutions that we've been rolling out. Obviously, we have a robust downstream business and construction now, which is really part of connecting design and making the architecture, engineering construction industry. People are buying into that. And we saw a lot of strength in our enterprise customers exactly because they were buying into our connected solution from design to construction.
So you're already seeing that today, it's happening. There's going to be more showing up as customers continue to invest in the deeper integrations of life-cycle solutions we bring to market, and of course with the rise of the automations that are going to be coming from AI.
SEANA SMITH: Andrew, what is the runway look like for AI adoption? I'm curious just to get your perspective, as a key AI player, many investors view your stock as that as well. What do you make of this excitement that we've seen surrounding the technology over the last several months?
ANDREW ANAGNOST: Well, there's always a hype cycle on these things, right? You know, the-- the real rewards with AI go to those who continue to produce meaningful outcomes with the technology. Remember we've been in this game for at least a decade. We've been delivering machine learning based, AI-based solutions to our customers for a while. And we-- we have a long term path for how we're going to improve the way our customers work with what they do today, the processes they have today, but also disrupt their processes quite significantly with new types of AI tools.
So there's going to be an ongoing patient delivery of technology. There may also be a hype cycle out there where some people get disillusioned with AI in the short-term. but you got to ignore that. The long-term potential here is gigantic.
